Charles Palliser (52 page)

“But only be reasonable. How else are we going to eat and stay warm?”

She seemed to be finding the courage to say something: “Johnnie, I’ve been thinking.

Now please don’t be angry with me, but why don’t we offer to sell the codicil to Sir Perceval after all?”

I thought of what I had learned about the law from the two gentlemen and the understanding I had begun to acquire of how my family’s claim might be valid.

“No,” I said. “That would be very silly. I’m sure it’s worth a great deal more than they would ever give us for it.”

“We should never have left Bethnal-green,” she sighed.

I was suddenly angry and wanted to blurt out the horrible truth about the Isbisters.

“Those people may not have been very charming,” she went on. “But they were good to us.”

“Then go back there!” I cried.

Now, in exasperation, I told her what I had seen that night I had followed the cart to the graveyard. To my annoyance she refused to believe me, telling me I was merely remembering the story of Syed Naomaun and his wife that had frightened me all those years ago. I was furious at this and we quarrelled fiercely.

Afterwards I reproached myself and asked her pardon, and at last she forgave me and kissed me and said she was sorry for being such a goose but that the idea of losing the locket was almost more than she could bear.

Then I said: “Well, would you agree to pawn it? We would have to keep up the interest payments or we would lose it, but if we got some money we could redeem it.”

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She reflected.

“Yes, I believe I could resign myself to that,” she said at last. “We will ask Helen’s advice when she comes in.”

Miss Quilliam agreed that my idea was a reasonable one. We would raise less by pawning than by selling but on the other hand, if we could redeem it in the spring when our earnings should rise, it would be a useful form of security for the future.

So the next morning my mother and I went out into the surrounding streets to look for the sign of the three golden balls. At the first we came to, on the corner of Orchard-street and Dean-street, we followed a pointing hand that led up an alley-way to a back-door. Inside we found ourselves in a dark passage at the end of which were a number of wooden boxes. We entered one of them, bolted it on the inside, and waited at the counter while the taker dealt with someone in a neighbouring box. On the racking behind the counter were shelved the pledges: jewellery, watches, pelisses, bed-ticks, wrappers, duffles, Waterloo medals, and so on.

After a few minutes the man attended to us.

“What will you give me on this?” my mother asked, taking the locket from around her neck.

The taker took it and looked at it very closely: “One pound ten shillings,” he answered.

She hesitated but I remembered that Mrs Philliber had said we should not take less than three pounds for it, so I led her out of the office and impressed upon her that this was the very least she should accept. We walked on and the next, in Princes-street, offered us two pounds, then the next only one pound and six shillings.

In the fourth, which was a little further up on the corner with Bennet-street, the man behind the counter looked at the locket without much interest. He had a squint and carried one shoulder higher than the other so that his chin was forced into his collar-bone at an angle.

“One pound and five shillings,” he said.

My mother shook her head. Then he opened the locket and it seemed to me that he was suddenly interested. He examined the initials with particular attention, then studied the two miniatures, glancing at my mother to compare her with her painted likeness.

“I’ll give you two pound on it,” he said.

My mother declined and turned to go.

“Wait,” he called out. “What do you want?”

“Three pounds.”

“I can’t go so far, but I’ll give you two pounds fifteen shillings.”

My mother hesitated.

“Two pounds seventeen shillings,” he said.

“Very well,” my mother said.

“Don’t do it,” I whispered.

“What a silly boy you are,” she said. “Whyever not?”

I could say nothing, except that I had vague suspicions. So I stayed silent.

“What name shall I write on the duplicate?” the man asked.

My mother hesitated.

“Halfmoon,” she said. “Mrs Halfmoon.”

I looked at her in surprise. Why had she chosen such a strange name? We SECRET BENEFACTORS

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had once walked down a street whose sign bore that legend, but what had made it lodge in her memory?

“Interest payable monthly,” the man said as he handed the duplicate over.

She took it and the money and put them in her outside pocket, and we left the shop.

When we got home we paid Miss Quilliam back some of what we had borrowed over the last few months.

Later we exchanged our fine clothes for cheaper but warmer garments. This was a crucial step for, as Miss Quilliam pointed out, it would henceforth be impossible for my mother to appear as a lady in the cheap and ill-fitting garments she now wore.

That terrible winter of bitter memory was now approaching, and as the days grew darker and colder we found it more and more difficult to work. When I went down to the yard in the morning, there were often people slumbering on the stair who had taken shelter there from the cold. I had to break the ice in the leaden cistern before I could bring up the water for our tea, and by this time my mother and Miss Quilliam would be working by the light of dips so that the stench of tallow already filled the room.

Although we encouraged each other with the thought of Christmas, it was not that we anticipated being able to mark it with any kind of celebration, but simply that we hoped that the Season would begin not long after that and therefore that the demand for all manner of clothes-making would increase.

My mother’s cough grew worse and I would often lie in the cold and darkness resenting the way she was keeping me awake and yet feeling a terrible anguish for her.

We all suffered from the low-fever and my mother, in particular, from night-sweats and bad dreams that brought her suddenly awake and crying out in terror.

Yet there were times even then that I remember with some tenderness. I recall one misty afternoon late in November when I had met the two gentlemen — who had also abandoned work early because of the weather — and we had walked home together. As we had passed the Abbey it had loomed up vast and black, the mist making it seem that there was nothing behind it. In the distance the houses — save for the occasional yellow flickering of a lighted window — were indistinguishable blocks of darkness whose chimneys and gables alone were visible against the lighter shades of the sky. And higher up the blue vault became a liverish purple where the sun still shone feebly on the top of the mist.

Mr Pentecost and Mr Silverlight had invited me to share their supper and as we were finishing it Miss Quilliam had come in saying, “There you are, Johnnie. I thought you might be here.”

The four of us — for after the party my mother had returned to her refusal to speak to Mr Pentecost, and, indeed, now included Mr Silverlight in her anathema as well — often gathered in the tent in the Peachments’ room. And so Miss Quilliam (who had overcome her reservations about entering it) joined us where we were snugly toasting muffins before the fire.

“Your mother,” she said to me, “is writing furiously in her pocket-book. Do you know what it is?”

“I believe it is an account of her life. There are things she will not tell me, but she wants me one day to know the whole truth.”

I nearly bit my tongue, for I had uttered one of the controversial terms I tried to avoid.

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“The truth!” cried Mr Pentecost indignantly.

“Indeed, the Truth. A noble ideal.”

“Nonsense! The truth is a lie, a fiction. Why, there is more truth in the silliest romance than in the most elevated history.”

“That may be so,” said Mr Silverlight. “I myself have written several plays and epic romances in verse which have been ignored because of the petty envy of the managers and the book-sellers. And I must own, there was a great deal of Truth in ’em. Perhaps I could turn my hand to a novel, for there would be more money in that. I know how well I could write the sections on High Society — from a satirical angle, of course — but I couldn’t stoop to the low-life and the intrigue. I know I should be no use at all at plotting.”

“Oh, leave that to me!” Mr Pentecost said.

“Are you such a designing creature?” Miss Quilliam said with a smile. “I begin to be quite afraid of you.”

“I believe I should be good at tracing out intrigues,” Mr Pentecost admitted as if rather ashamed of it. “But I readily acknowledge that what we call the motives of other people are entirely mysterious to me.”

“That is surely a serious handicap in an aspiring novel-writer,” suggested Miss Quilliam, smiling at me.

“On the contrary, for motives do not matter. All that matters is what people do.”

“That is nonsense,” said Mr Silverlight. “Motives are all that is important. Apart from elevated language and the design of the whole.”

“Design of the whole!” Mr Pentecost cried, and I believe his indignation cost him a six-penn’orth of snuff. “How can there be a design, my ridiculous fellow? Life is too random and arbitrary for that.”

“You’re wrong. Reason provides Man with his clew to the design that underlies the Universe.”

“The argument from Design!” Mr Pentecost exclaimed, his eyebrows shooting up.

“Discredited decades ago!”

“The purpose of a work of Art,” Mr Silverlight continued as if he had not spoken, “is that Man may trace this out and find the pattern for himself. In any novel I collaborated upon everything would be a part of the whole design — down even to the disposition and numbering of the chapters.” “fiddlesticks! Novelist-writers are liars. There is no pattern. No meaning save what we choose to impose.”

“Your views, it seems to me, are complementary rather than in conflict,” Miss Quilliam suggested pacifically. Then, glancing with amusement at me, she went on: “So perhaps you should collaborate. Mr Silverlight could take responsibility for describing the motives of the characters (particularly, of course, in the upper ranks) while you, Mr Pentecost, could concentre your talents upon the elements of plotting and intrigue.”

I smiled at the notion, for I thought it would be like their Punch and Joan show.

“A capital idea!” Mr Silverlight cried. “But I think I should have to take charge of the design of the whole.”

“Not for a minute!” exclaimed his friend.

Miss Quilliam and I left the prospective collaborators arguing about this and returned to our chamber which we found in darkness. From the gloom my mother said slowly and indistinctly: “Why were you so long? I was all SECRET BENEFACTORS

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alone here and I was so frightened. Why did you stay with those horrid men?”

Miss Quilliam lit a candle and I saw my mother slumped in her chair with her pocket-book and her pen fallen to the floor before her. Our friend gestured to me to withdraw, so I entered the little closet where I slept. Why was my mother confused and childish like this so often now? And why was she suddenly so hostile to Mr Silverlight? I fell asleep listening to the murmur of their voices.

The fog was even thicker the next day. And in the days that followed, the misery of the poor increased. As a consequence of a disastrous harvest, the price of a four pound loaf rose from the eight-pence farthing it had cost when we had arrived in London to eleven-pence only this short time later.

As Yule-tide approached, the weather, which until now had been wet but not unusually cold, deteriorated. A hard frost gripped the land and stopped all employment in the brick-fields and the market-gardens which were at that time so numerous around the metropolis. To make matters worse, an East wind blew so steadily that ships could not come up the river to unload. Then a week before Christmas the Thames froze over as it had not done for forty years and all those involved in the river trade — coaling, wherrying, ballasting, ship-wrighting, and many others — were cast out of work.

We observed rather than celebrated Christmas, not daring even to halt work for the day. On Boxing-day deep snow fell in the capital and brought to a halt what little outdoor-work was still in train. Gangs of men patroled the metropolis and suburbs carrying the implements of their trades — hods for brick-layers, rakes for market-gardeners, and so on — and raised the traditional cry: “Froze out! All froze out!” as they proffered their hats for alms. The number of people begging in the streets visibly increased, as did that of street vendors, while against this the quantity of foot-passengers declined. Faced with this competition my earnings dropped even lower.

Worst of all, however, was the effect of the weather on the fashionable Season.

Because of the state of the roads His Majesty and his family remained at Windsor and many of their most elevated subjects chose to emulate them by staying in the country after Christmas. And so the start of the Season, that usually occurred in the middle of January, was delayed; Parliament did not reassemble and race-meetings were cancelled.

All of this meant that the hoped-for demand for clothes on which we were relying failed to appear and we, like many other trades — tailors, shoe-makers, dress-makers, cabinet-makers, harness-makers, saddlers, servants, cabmen, farriers — suffered in consequence.

The streets around all the workhouses were thronged with people seeking relief, nearly all of whom were refused outdoor assistance. I myself saw some of those who had been turned away from St. Anne’s workhouse by Drury-lane, then accost well-dressed foot-passengers for alms in a threatening manner, and meanwhile reports circulated that mobs had attacked bread-shops and eating-houses in Whitechapel.

One morning at the end of January Mr Peachment told us that Dick had failed to return the night before. At first they were very alarmed for his safety but after a few days they realized, after going over and over the things he had been saying for the past few months, that he had deserted them. This was a heavy blow to the family for they relied on his earnings, and Mr Pentecost expressed to the parents his deep contrition for having put ideas into the boy’s head.